Sunday, 13 November 2016

The soul of a nation, the globalization of rage.

If the soul
of the nation is the people, then the trust of the people is the key of
government. Lose trust and you lose the nation's soul.

This
morning's article is by Professor Jean-Pierre Lehman entitled "The rise of
China and the fall of democracy". The main thrust of the article is the
decline of trust in most western-inspired democracies.

I guess we
in the western front celebrated the triumph of capitalism and democracy after
the fall of Berlin in 1989 too early. It was a premature birth (of modern
democracy) that is throwing up a lot of issues of late - some of which are even
threatening its very foundation.

The end of
history (of communism) - so preaches Francis Fukuyama - is definitely not the
end of corrupt, distrustful, kleptocratic, populist, incompetent, plutocratic,
greedy, self-enriching, dictatorial, egotistic and filthy mouth government.

Professor
Lehman wrote: "Autocracies are run on fear. Democracies are held together
by trust. And trust is in extremely short supply globally generally and in
democracies particularly; not...because there is more trust in dictatorship,
but...because trust is the glue of democracies."

And this
glue is too diluted by self-perpetuation and self-profiting to be able to bind
the democratic hope, vision and aspiration of the people together.

Lesson? One.
And it is about the globalisation of rage (Pankaj Mishra). Just when we the hoi
polloi thought it was save to go back into the waters, the late-20th century
struck us with what some political commentators call the "great democratic
tsunamis".

This
democratic tsunamis came with much promises. It tore down military
dictatorships in Latin America, it inspired the People Power Revolution in
Asia, and in Africa, the late Nelson Mandela became the Western equivalent of
the Statue of Liberty, huddling the masses together with rejuvenating hope.

Faith and
freedom in the new democratic tide washed away all the bad memories of Hitler's
Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Marcos' Philippines, de Klerk's Apartheid South
Africa, and its rippling aftermath even spurred on the Arab Spring.

But still
waters also run deep. The democratic tsunamis also took with it the Prometheus'
fire of democracy, that is, trust. It wrecked trust in its blinding broad sweep
of rage and greed.

History is
democracy's own damning advocate here with the transition of the revered
Mandela to the disappointing Zuma, with the impeachment of former president
Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), with the consolidation of power as her core leader
President Xi, with the populist PM of India Narendra Modi, with the disgraced
Park Geun Hye of South Korea, with the whitewashed hypocrisy of Najib, and with
the smiling dictatorship of Putin and Erdogan.

In this
laundry list of shame, I really don't know where to put a character like
Duterte (who recently told the media that his god would crash the plane he is
in if he doesn't stop swearing).

And here
comes the baddest tsunamis of them all - Clinton and Trump. Tomorrow, we will
know for sure who will lead the greatest democratic nation of all, that is, the
frontrunner of liberty, equality and hope, the celebrated land of the free, and
the veritable American Dream!

Alas, if the
Founding Fathers were witnessing this, they would have gone back to tear up and
redraft the Constitution papers wholesale. Something must have seriously been
lost in translation over the succeeding presidential terms.

I guess the
bane of democracy has always been the same, and it is the bane of human nature.
In the same way that you can't dignify a crook with a shimmering cloak, you
can't make a corrupt politician honest by hiding behind an ideological smoke.

When you
throw light at darkness, darkness will go. Darkness and light cannot coexist.
Likewise, if you have true democracy, where its noble and defensible principles
are both the means as well as the end to one's motivation and actions, you
cannot remain as you are - unscrupulous, unprincipled and underhanded - and
hope that you can make an enduring difference.

In the end, democracy is
just one of the tools of government. Use its noble principles for the good of
the people and you will reap a harvest of real, positive changes. But use it to
advance your own agenda at all costs, and you'll end up destroying both -
democracy and yourself. Cheerz.